


Found

by LadyJanelly



Series: CM hooker-fic [1]
Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: M/M, Pre-Series, Pre-Slash, Prostitution, hooker-fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-02
Updated: 2012-07-02
Packaged: 2017-11-09 00:19:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/449145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyJanelly/pseuds/LadyJanelly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He knows there’s irony in searching for something meaningful where most men go for a cheap quick fuck.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Found

Derek turns the rental car south towards the local stroll. He can’t do this in a bureau vehicle and it wouldn’t be right to do it in one borrowed from the Vegas PD either. 

He’s given the team the impression he’s meeting up with the cute blonde CSI that they worked with on the case. He knows it would be safer if that was true. He can’t do it though. Can’t face another empty romp like cotton candy in his soul. He knows there’s irony in searching for something meaningful where most men go for a cheap quick fuck. 

He takes his foot off the gas and the car slows to a lazy cruise. Slow enough for him to look over the street-walkers that clutter the corners in this part of town. He doesn’t have a particular type in mind but he eliminates more than half on the first glance. Too old, too high, too jaded. A petite little Latina catches his eye. Too young to be out here wobbling on high heels that don’t even fit her feet.

He pulls the car up to the curb and pulls the cash out of his pocket. Getting them into the car is the trickiest part. After that it’s just a matter of getting them to take what they want and need from him. 

He puts on his best smile--all charm with just enough lust for her to take his come-on seriously.

The girl he has his eye on is halfway to his car and then some skinny boy disengages himself from the cluster of hookers he’d been loitering with and stops her with a hand on her arm. They talk for a second and Derek is intrigued by the boy’s smile and how he gently sends her back to the spot he’d just left.

The boy is the one who comes over to Derek’s open window. Dark hair flops in his eyes and he’s so thin that Derek can see his collar bone and count half his ribs through the tight t-shirt he wears. He doesn’t have a junkie’s vibe though and Derek feels an unfamiliar tingle at the bright intelligence of his smile.

“What can I do for you tonight, officer?” 

And never, of all the times Derek’s done this, has anybody made him in the first ten seconds of contact.

Adrenaline sparks along his nerves before his rational mind can tell him this isn’t Chicago, that he isn’t undercover. 

“I’m off the clock,” he says, and flashes the fifty. He’s forgotten the girl already. This is the one he wants tonight. “You available for a date?”

The boy glances over his shoulder at a tall muscular guy who leans against the wall watching over the block and then back at Derek. He grazes his teeth over his own lower lip but the gesture looks deliberately provocative and not like a sign of true nervousness. The kid is confident and Derek hasn’t seen many prostitutes with that sort of brazenness.

“A date?” the kid asks as he opens the car door and folds his long coltish limbs into the passenger seat. “Sure. Where are you taking me?”

Derek finds an answering smile curling his own lips. God this is what he needed tonight. Just what he needed. He passes the kid the money. So there’s no misunderstanding about the hustler getting paid for this.

“What are you in the mood for?” and he can see that he’s surprised the kid as much as the kid had tried to surprise him. 

There are so many ways that question could be answered, from “Your dick” to some cheesy-ass diner. Instead the kid offers “There’s a Sushi Mon not far from here.” 

The words are challenge and test both and Derek finds he likes the way the kid’s smile gets even brighter when he puts the car in drive and says “Sushi it is, then.”

\------------------

Derek gives the kid his real name and he gets back an obvious alias: Isaac. Beyond that he breaks every profile of a prostitute that Derek’s ever seen. He quotes Nietzsche and the chemical components of Derek’s sake. He asks for a sushi restaurant and then eats eel and California rolls with a fork. 

Derek’s first guess had been that the “Isaac” was so thin because of malnutrition and poverty. After an hour listening to the kid talk about everything and nothing and only take a bite every hundred words or so, he changes his theory on that. 

His smiles are wide and generous, his teeth white and healthy and straight. His eyes hide just enough though that there’s no question this is all for the client’s amusement. He only gives so much.

“Your fifty’s almost up,” the kid mentions over green tea ice cream.

“There’s more where that came from,” Derek reassures him. And if there was ever a hooker that he’d actually have sex with instead of just trying to get off the street, this is the one. “You need to check in with your pimp? I don’t want to get you in trouble.”

Isaac covers his surprise with a cough. “Pimp? No, Frank’s an employee, not employer.”

Derek finds himself beyond intrigued. “Really. And the girls on that block?”

“An organization of independent operators.” There’s no missing the spark of pride in the kid’s voice.

“I take it you had something to do with that?” 

That bright smile flashes again. “It was timing more than anything. A pimp overdosed just as I was coming onto the scene and left a power vacuum. I suggested a way to fill it where the control stayed in the hands of the ones who were doing all the work.”

“Come back to my hotel room.” He has to know. Why a kid so bright and beautiful is selling himself. He aches with the need to know and the need to do whatever it takes to change the situation.

Isaac shrugs and pushes away the last of his melted desert. “Yeah. Okay then.”

\------------

They lounge on Derek’s bed and watch an hour of Discovery channel. Isaac elaborates on the biography of Nostradamus and criticizes their interpretations of his works. He’s launching into a discussion on how every society sees itself if the predictions are vague enough when Derek breaks in with “How did someone so smart end up walking the streets?”

That startles Isaac into silence for a moment and he pushes his hair back behind one ear. “I started working the tables at the casinos first but they didn’t appreciate my success rate.”

And it’s not so hard to imagine this kid counting cards and having a system for the blackjack tables. Still.

“So what then? You’re no junkie. What else could make you need the money that bad?” Something shifts behind the kid’s eyes. Close but not it. “Who. Who do you need the money for?” 

Isaac shakes his head and his smile is sad. “I would have let Kiki go with you if I’d known this was what you were looking for.”

That’s no answer but Derek feels like if he lets the kid stop talking he’ll never start again. “Oh yeah? Why’s that?”

“This is some sort of rescue, right? Like an intervention? She could use it a lot more than I could. Three months, four at the most, and everything changes for me. What you’re offering might have made a difference for her.”

Derek can feel the kid slipping away from him. “A lot can happen in four months. You don’t have to do this. You don’t have to be this.” He doesn’t use the alias. Desperation colors his voice.

Isaac shakes his head and moves to his feet. “This is real to you. I can’t take money from someone who thinks this is real.” 

“Wait.” Derek can’t--won’t stop him physically but he puts all of his years of training into that word and Isaac stops. “Take my card. Please. Please. If you need anything. If I can help you, call me.” 

Those graceful slim fingers reach out and brush Derek’s as Isaac takes the small rectangle of paper. “Take care of yourself, officer,” he says and puts it into his pocket without looking at it.

Isaac leaves and Derek doesn’t know if he blew it or if this was just another case of a kid he couldn’t save.

\--------------

If they don’t call in a couple days they aren’t going to. A week goes by and Derek wishes he’d done something more, something better, but Isaac doesn’t call. Work keeps him busy but the memory of those dark eyes and graceful fingers haunts him whenever he closes his eyes.

And then five months later Derek’s phone rings from a number he doesn’t know and when he answers there’s a moment of silence before that voice he’d hoped so desperately to hear all those months ago asks “Did I--is this a bad time?”

“No,” Derek’s quick to say as he pulls off into the breakdown lane so he can turn his full attention to the call. Getting home in time to sleep before he has to be at work in the morning loses all importance. “I didn’t expect to hear from you though. Isaac, right? Everything okay, man?”

There’s another awkward pause and then the kid’s warm chuckle in his ear. “Spencer. It’s Spencer, actually.”

For half a second Derek thinks this is a goodbye call. That the kid has taken an overdose or slit his wrists in a bathtub somewhere and Derek’s is the only number he has of someone who might give a damn that he’s dead. 

But the kid, Spencer, is still talking and Derek turns his concentration to the words instead of listening for slurring or background noise. “I just wanted you to know that I made it out. And that you helped. That you cared enough to even try, it helped.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Derek says and he is. “You doing alright now? Dealing or processing or whatever?”

“I compartmentalize very well,” Spencer says. “Anyway, I just--” And Derek can hear the goodbye that will come next.

“Hey,” he says to draw the conversation out that little bit more. “You can call me. Anytime for anything. Just to talk or whatever. You know that, right?”

“Okay,” says Spencer like he thinks Derek’s a little off in the head and Derek has to wonder if he might be right. “Thanks. And you have a good night, okay?” 

“You too,” says Derek and he listens to nothing for a long second after Spencer hangs up. 

That should be the end of it. Closure. But somehow Derek doesn’t think it will be. Spencer is becoming predictable in his tendency to choose the least likely course of action. 

Derek carefully saves the incoming number with Spencer's name before he puts the car in drive and starts for home again.

\---------

Only four days go by between calls the next time. Derek’s at dinner with a red headed beauty he met at the gym and trying to forget the forty-eight hours of trying to stop a spree killer in Austin. He’s thinking of the immediate future. Them together in her bed or his but when his phone rings and he sees the caller ID he smiles his apology and leaves the table. “I have to take this. Work.”

“Spencer,” he says with a smile as he steps outside the restaurant. “Everything okay?” 

“Oh. Yeah.” Spencer says, and then “Well no. I saw the news. About your team’s work in Texas. I wanted to be sure you knew you could call me too. Not that I know what to say or anything. But I could listen. I would always listen. This goes two ways, right? It’s not just a pity thing?”

“Thanks,” Derek says because he doesn’t know how to say that he isn’t a “talk about his feelings” kind of guy but he doesn’t want to slap Spencer down when he’s trying so hard to reach out. “So how’ve things been going for you?”

He listens for almost half an hour about the job offer Spencer got and how the training is going. 

When he gets back to the table his date has already left. He doesn’t really mind.

\--------

The third call comes during work hours and Spencer sounds--not afraid on the phone but rushed. “Did you mean it?” he asks. “That I can call you if I need anything?”

And “anything” can mean a lot but Derek won’t back out now. He steps out of the break-room and heads towards his desk where it’s quieter. “What do you need, Spencer?”

“Forget that we met. How we met. Please.”

A shiver goes down Derek’s back. “Spencer, what’s going on? Are you in trouble?”

“I’m sorry. I have to go.”

Derek’s protests fall on dead air. He calls the number back and it goes straight to voice mail. Spencer’s voice saying You have reached the number of Dr. Reid. I’m not available right now, please leave a message. 

Shit. This is not happening. He pushes away from his desk with every intention of having Spencer’s phone tracked by its GPS. As he turns to go the elevator opens and Hotch, Gideon and the object of Derek's distress step out. Spencer looks so different in his ill-fitting dark suit and slicked-down hair. He looks thinner despite the layers but nervous and happy.

Hotch looks up. Sees him and smiles and calls “Morgan. I’d like to introduce you to the newest member of the BAU. Derek Morgan, Doctor Spencer Reid.”


End file.
